Potted Sherlock, Mrs Hudson’s Christmas Corker
London
It’s beginning to look a lot like an elementary Christmas, with two Sherlock Holmes-themed shows in London this week. Potted Sherlock (Vaudeville Theatre, WC2, Mon to 11 Jan) follows Potted Panto and Potted Potter, and sees Olivier award nominees Dan Clarkson and Jefferson Turner in a slightly more adult entertainment, in which they do the works – that’s 60 stories - in only 80 minutes. Meanwhile, Mrs Hudson’s Christmas Corker (Wilton’s Music Hall, E1, Sat to 31 Dec), by comedy writing great Barry Cryer and his son Bob, is a funny take on Conan Doyle’s The Adventure Of The Blue Carbuncle, featuring inept magicians, cod ventriloquists and lady boxers, all in the music hall tradition.
White Bear Theatre, SE11, Sat, to 21 Dec
MC
By The Light Of The Fool Moon
nr Ravenglass
Created by new company Hocket & Hoot, this promenade production takes you into the hidden passageways and rooms of Muncaster Castle, places where the public don’t usually gain access. There’s a great team here, including Fine Chisel’s Tom Spencer as director, and music from Verity Standen, who is very much becoming a name to drop since her productions Hug and Mmm Hmmm garnered great acclaim in Bristol. Beginning in a pop-up Christmas bar and ending with festive food in the Great Hall, the show encourages the audience to uncover the secrets of the castle as a professor arrives at the ancient site convinced the Fool Moon, which hasn’t occurred in five centuries, is about to shine once more.
Muncaster Castle, Thu to 23 Dec
LG
Around The World In 80 Days
Cambridge
New International Encounter’s Hansel And Gretel was lovely, full of nods and winks but sharp on the storytelling too. So expect something engaging from their staged version of Jules Verne’s story, with clowning, live music and umbrellas that transform into trees being some of the ingredients that turn Phileas Fogg’s wager that he can navigate the globe in 80 days into a show that is part ripping yarn and part farcical adventure story. Follow his exploits along with this delightful multi-lingual company, who time and again have proven that theatre is their first language.
The Junction, to 4 Jan
LG
Christmas
London
The early work of writer Simon Stephens, best known now for his award-winning, Broadway-storming adaptation of Mark Haddon’s bestselling novel The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time, revealed an acute observation of ordinary people. It’s something particularly apparent in this revival of his play Christmas, which was first staged at the Bush Theatre in 2004. Like Conor McPherson’s The Weir, it’s set in a pub with heavy boozers – the East End rather than rural Ireland – as four men gather together a week before the big holiday. Their obsessions, past lives, their dreams and failures and their prospects for the future unravel as the drink flows, with one of them revealed to hold a dark secret.
White Bear Theatre, SE11, Sat, to 21 Dec
MC
Arabian Nights
Cardiff
There is plenty of choice at the Sherman this Christmas, where younger members of the family will enjoy The Ugly Duckling in the theatre’s studio space (to 4 Jan). But it’s storytelling of a different kind that takes place in the main house, where Rachel O’Riordan revisits Dominic Cooke’s very fine version of the story of Shahrazad, first performed in 1998. It follows the young girl as she tells stories in order to save her neck from her new husband, a vengeful king who feels he’s been betrayed by a previous wife. This is a show about the transformative power of stories and of theatre itself, and comes with lashings of wit and plenty of adventure as familiar stories such as Ali Baba and Sinbad The Sailor are given rude life. The show comes with an original score by Simon Slater and is performed by a cast of actor-musicians. Let them transport you on their magic carpet of stories.
Sherman Theatre, to 3 Jan
LG
Glimmer
Glasgow
Fed up with the thought of Christmas? Then meet Megan, who can’t find much to celebrate when it’s dark and cold, outside and inside too. She feels miserable, not festive, but her sister Rosie is on hand to remind Megan that she used to love Christmas when she was a child. And if Megan doesn’t believe her, she’s got the old family memorabilia to prove it. Created by Glas(s) Performance, who have produced some really terrific shows – particularly with Tramway’s youth group Junction 25 – this show for all the family features two real-life sisters as it excavates what the festive period really means and the role that family and community play at this time of the year.
Tramway, Sat to 21 Dec
LG
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